So let me get this straight -- Patents not only cover the right to produce instances of an invention, but also for usage of those instances/devices also? So what happens if for example Ford is found to be violating someones patent on an engine part. Then even if Ford pays up a license, could the patent owner sue me for driving the car, and charge me a per mile royalty?
Part of me would love to see this happen, simply so that enough "regular people" will force their politicians to change the laws.
This is, after all, why many U.S.-based distros refused to package and ship patent-encumbered code by default, is because end-users would also be theoretically liable.
I'm not sure this has ever been tested in court. But yes, as far as I can tell, that is what they are trying to claim.
It's interesting, because to stream H.264 video, you don't even need to necessarily have encode it. You could get video encoded by a third party (perhaps you got it that way, or perhaps you sent it to a third party to re-encode), serve it to your users, and they could play it with licensed H.264 player. The MPEG-LA seems to think that for doing that, you should have to pay them a license, despite the fact that you have never touched an H.264 encoder or decoder.
I would find it hard to believe that they could sue you for this and actually succeed, though they could probably bleed smaller players dry in the process of defending themselves.
It would be interesting to set up a video service that did this; used H.264 without ever using an encoder. You could make your users upload it encoded appropriately, or use Zencoder or AWS Encoding to transcode it for you.
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When Apple shipped an encoder they paid a license fee, and YouTube has to pay a license fee as well. So you're fine.
But yes, quite possibly millions of people have been violating the H264 patent terms without knowing it.
So let me get this straight -- Patents not only cover the right to produce instances of an invention, but also for usage of those instances/devices also? So what happens if for example Ford is found to be violating someones patent on an engine part. Then even if Ford pays up a license, could the patent owner sue me for driving the car, and charge me a per mile royalty?
Part of me would love to see this happen, simply so that enough "regular people" will force their politicians to change the laws.
Yes. That's how patents work. Patents violations cover both creators of the infringing device and users.
This is, after all, why many U.S.-based distros refused to package and ship patent-encumbered code by default, is because end-users would also be theoretically liable.
I'm not sure this has ever been tested in court. But yes, as far as I can tell, that is what they are trying to claim.
It's interesting, because to stream H.264 video, you don't even need to necessarily have encode it. You could get video encoded by a third party (perhaps you got it that way, or perhaps you sent it to a third party to re-encode), serve it to your users, and they could play it with licensed H.264 player. The MPEG-LA seems to think that for doing that, you should have to pay them a license, despite the fact that you have never touched an H.264 encoder or decoder.
I would find it hard to believe that they could sue you for this and actually succeed, though they could probably bleed smaller players dry in the process of defending themselves.
It would be interesting to set up a video service that did this; used H.264 without ever using an encoder. You could make your users upload it encoded appropriately, or use Zencoder or AWS Encoding to transcode it for you.